Tag Archives: Nicole Kidman

In an effort to drum up some posting after leaving this blog essentially dormant for, well, too long… here’s me taking the 30 Day Music Challenge. It’s spreading well enough that it’s still interesting, and it’s relevant enough to my interests that it’s worth pursuing. I love music, and I’ve come to associate certain songs with certain parts of my life, and it’s a fun opportunity to talk about some well-remembered songs.

Day 26 is “a song that makes you want to fall in love”. There were only really ever going to be a handful of choices for this one for me, and this is the obvious one that won out today.

Elephant Love Medleyalways struck me as an odd title for a song, but when the time came to take a closer look at it and actually get a feel for the material (while studying how to adapt the film to the stage for Cue), the whole thing just blew me away. I looked like a goon who could simply not stop grinning at the faculty room computer. I’m a sucker for cleverly working in references to things, so this was always going to really work for me. The sheer cleverness of folding in damn near every existing lyric with the word “love” in it into a medley with such a lovely melody (brought to life by their wonderful vocals) had me sold on it from the intro (“A life without love? Love is like oxygen! Love is a many-splendored thing! Love lifts us up where we belong — all you NEED is love!”). That it fit so well with the narrative by being the spur-of-the-moment composition of ahead-of-his-time writer character Christian was nothing short of brilliant.

What can I say, the whole thing just makes you want to believe in falling in love.

I’ll link you to the number from the film so you can see the delightful chemistry between Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman, which works in concert (heh) with the great romantic mashup that the medley offers.

In an effort to drum up some posting after leaving this blog essentially dormant for, well, too long… here’s me taking the 30 Day Music Challenge. It’s spreading well enough that it’s still interesting, and it’s relevant enough to my interests that it’s worth pursuing. I love music, and I’ve come to associate certain songs with certain parts of my life, and it’s a fun opportunity to talk about some well-remembered songs.

Day 17 is “a song that would sing a duet with on karaoke” (?). Again, not something I’m likely to ever do unless you get me drunk enough, and seeing as how I don’t drink…

Originally I’d waffled between Here’s to Love by Renee Zelwegger and Ewan McGregor, which is a nice big-band style song that that vocal showoff McGregor does well in (Zellweger doesn’t do too badly but doesn’t get to go wild) — and Something Stupid, infinitely more survivable than the former if using Robbie Williams’ take (with Nicole Kidman).

But Whenever I Say Your Name was on the playlist recently, and it occurred to me that this deserved attention as well. It’s one of Sting’s 2000s works, originally performed with Mary J. Blige (which probably explains the style of the song). That version plays to their strengths, but I find that I listen more to the Live in Berlin duet with the wonderful Jo Lawry. The former does have the advantage of a super silly music video, though.